A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

Industry benefits.
    Steve O’Leary talked in more detail with Daniel Cool, Silas’s father and, with his permission, took a taperecorded statement.
    Silas Cool’s early life had been anything but average. Daniel Cool’s career as an accountant for a petroleum company had taken him all over the world. He had met and married Ena, four years younger than he and a native of South Africa. Silas was born in Palenbang, Sumatra, Indonesia, in 1954. They had moved to Pakistan when Silas was a very small boy. Finally, they had come back to the U.S., settling in North Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1960, when Silas was five years old. He was their only son, their only child. They were nearly old enough to be grandparents when he was born.
    “What kind of child was Silas?” O’Leary asked.
    “A very good child,” Daniel Cool said, “Well-mannered, quiet. The neighbors used to comment and say, ‘He’s such a good boy,’ but I guess all kids are good.”
    Silas had graduated from North Plainfield High School in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1973. He had always earned respectable—if not spectacular—grades. If Silas had a passion, it was golf, although he had never played on a high school team. “He played at local clubs,” Daniel said.
    In his yearbook, Silas gave his plans as “playing golf at the farm.” But his father was convinced that he had hurt his back severely during one of his mighty swings.
    Girls? Daniel couldn’t recall that Silas dated girls in high school. “My wife and I thought that was because of his ‘scoliosis problem.’ It made him on the shy side. I wish we could have caught that earlier . . .”
    The only job Silas had had in New Jersey hadn’t lasted long. He had worked as an usher in a theater. “He lost that one because they caught him leaning against the seats,” his father told O’Leary. “But that was because of his back problems hurting him.”
    Silas moved to Seattle in 1979. “He just wanted to explore the West Coast and he ended up in Seattle. He had a little Mustang then, and he drove out there—straight from New Jersey to Seattle.”
    Even though he had no friends in Seattle, Silas hadn’t had trouble getting a job, not with his civil engineer training. “He had lots of different jobs—all different jobs. But he lost most of them because of his back problems,” Daniel Cool recalled.
    In about 1985, Silas had gone to work for the county. Cool didn’t know why that had ended, but it had. He thought that Silas’s back must have gotten really bad about the same time.
    “He called us on March 25, 1989. He said he was going to move back home and we talked him out of that. His back was bad. He told me once in 1989 that his back was so bad he just wanted to swat people.” And still, his father didn’t want him to give up and move home, although his mother worried.
    Cool recalled that Silas had made “a mistake” in applying for disability for his back, and never got any compensation from the government. So the family had started to support him. “I think we’ve probably given him at least $75,000 over the years,” his father said. “Silas was just doing everything he could for his back pain. He had magnetic belts he put on, and massagers, and he lay down a lot. He told me one doctor said he just had to live with it. He came back here and we took him up to a hospital, and they didn’t make us feel very confident. Since then, he just didn’t go to any doctors.”
    Despite the chronic pain he seemed to be in, Silas didn’t take any prescription medication, relying, his father said, on vitamins and health food supplements.
    It seemed impossible to O’Leary that a man could be as disengaged from the world as Silas Cool had been and not have someone notice. He pushed a little harder, “He
never
exhibited any behavior as a child that would concern you—or your wife? Never had any psychiatric care?”
    Daniel Cool was adamant that Silas had never been under psychiatric care. Steve O’Leary got the impression that this would have been shameful for his family. No, his father insisted. Silas had been fine.
Fine.
“No—No counselors. No problems. I hear he was eating in soup kitchens out there?” his father said uncomfortably.
    “Yes—to save money,” O’Leary said.
    This was difficult for the old man; he had tried his best to see that his son had enough to get by on.
    “Did Silas ever seem depressed or angry?” O’Leary asked.
    “No. Oh, one time we went out